On Thu, 13 Apr 2017 10:59:22 -0400 "\\0xDynamite" <dreamingforward@gmail.com> wrote:
I said it before. Heavy industry amplifies human will. High technology amplifies the mind. They can amplify virtue or vice.
True, but not really what I am getting at. It seems to me that 'you guys' the cypherpunks/technology optimists have a naive or shallow understanding of the very technology you are selling or promoting.
Neither care.
Marx0s
On 4/12/17, juan <juan.g71@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, 12 Apr 2017 17:04:47 +0000 (UTC) jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: juan <juan.g71@gmail.com>
better technology, better mass surveillance
That's a rather limited way to look at things.
Maybe limited, but do you think what I say is incorrect?
Perhaps technology in general could be 'neutral' but it is a fact that technology the way it is being implemented right now shifts the balance of power away from individuals and towards the military-industrial-government organizations.
Let's consider: Are we better off due to (computer and information) technology than, say, 1980?
Better off, regarding what? Has the ability of the corporate-governmnet mafia to track its subject decreased, or wildly increased?
In 1980, home computers were little more than toys, and the Internet as the public now knows it was 15-20 years from existing. News was provided by four national networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS) and local newspapers, with no effective competition. People, generally, found it hard to talk (type) to each other, other than face-to-face speaking.
Political activism has been carried using printed media for a (long) while. Of course that same printed media has been mostly subverted by corporate-government madia. The fourth state is a branch of government.
But at least printed media technology could be used against the government and it didn't allow the government to track people. Books don't spy on you. The intershit does.
If you simply accept all of the positives of the subsequent 37 years as a given, and then ignore them, and focus solely on what you see to be the negatives, yes, you will get conclusions like "better technology, better mass surveillance".
No I don't think that's how the reckoning works.
Do the current systems allow waaay better surveillanece of subjects by the corporate-government mafia? The answer is yes. Whatever alleged 'positives' there are (I don't think there are any), the fact of better surveillance remains.
It is a fact just like it is fact that central banks counterfeit trillions and trillions of pseudo currency and that enriches the government and corporate mafia.
But one of the results of that technology was and is that we, the public, are far better able to monitor the actions of governments,
Where's the evidence for that claim?
which ostensibly act in our name(s). OUR 'mass surveillance' of the governments is very, very valuable.
It might be useful, if it existed. But it doesn't.
I have no doubt that, for example, the Bush 43 administration got far more pushback on their actions than did the LBJ administration 1963-1969, in regards to the Vietnam war.
I don't think there's any evidence for that sort of claim.
And even more pushback in regards to Syria. As, I
think, it ought to be and needs to be. Jim Bell